Tuesday, September 17, 2013

2013 CDC Resistant Bacteria 'Threat Report'

This note is not just about drug resistant bacteria but equally applies to many behaviors that humans have and continut to be engaged in.Here is the report: "http://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/threat-report-2013/".From what I've read antibiotics do something called 'forced evolution' of the bacteria. All the 'easy' copies of the particular bacteria are wiped out by the drug leaving only the few resistant cells. These cells may not be particularly suited to survive normal 'non-forced' natural selection but are artificially selected in favor of by the antibiotic. The unintended consequence of an antibiotic is to create antibiotic resistant bacteria.Not only are humans treated by antibiotics but also our food animals are being treated. I can imagine that the same unintended consequence will emerge among the bacteria we treat our animals for.In the long run only a decrease in human population to sustainable levels that are in balance with the rest of the biosphere will 'fix' this. The best way to decrease the population is to raise the standard of living among all humans and basically eliminating the conditions that keep the poorest countries poor, the decline in the population of the US/Canada and Western Europe shows that this works. The 'bad-news' is that we live on a planet with finite resources and until and unless we mend our unsustainable ways we will, in pretty short order, correct ourselves out of existence. Nature (natural selection) doses not give a hoot about how fancy humans are and instead treats us just like any other organism: If we insist on behaving like an opportunistic bloom we will crash just like all opportunistic blooms do.